Sensorium, arts fest hosted at Sunaparanta: Goa Center of the Arts

To artist Dayanita Singh, Sensorium owes its wandering, searching sense of vision; difficult, daring conversations helped expand on my original idea of a festival that had 'something to do with photography'. But she took this naïve and tender belief to a different altitude, reconfirming that the pictures would be better served by a choir of voices, literary, cinematic, musical. To make something larger than the sum of its parts, to scalpel deeper than the surface of a known world: Sensorium would not be this diverse, indefinable being without fine and difficult talks with her.

William Dalrymple, the scholar and historian, has the best stories on the best people; he ups the ante for gossip even for me (I have spies watching over you. Right. Now). I swoon over his severely researched, engaging books, and admire his enterprise in creating Jaipur Literary Festival. But I discovered he prospers so widely for he is a generous man. He often opened up his gilded address book to recommend a guest for Sensorium, sharing coordinates few would so directly and kindly propose. At dinner, with his beautiful, brilliant family, he referred me to his children as Uncle Siddharth (which, consequently, obligates my own daughter to call him Granpa Willie; now that has a lovely, apt ring to it, and scores in the chronological hierarchy of things).

Jitish Kallat is proof that true genius is a promiscuous thing: his work marshals many languages, many forms, and he came to Sensorium in his most recent avatar, as curator of the Kochi Bienale. I'd often believed two creatives can seldom exist together—the tension, the self-doubt, the competition would be too much to bear. But his wife, Reena Saini-Kallat, an industry powerhouse herself, is so strikingly contained in her own being that she can lend to him, and borrow from him, in a way that serves to soldier their individual virtuosity. When a marriage works, as it does for the Kallats, few things can compete with its willful solidarity. And so I decided, one day, I'm going to have one exactly like that.

It is a fact universally established that Sooni Taraporevala's work is of an abundant and sublime excellence; her new, exceptional show for Sensorium fortified her merits as both photographer and scriptwriter. But to me, she has been a dear, loyal friend, an intutionist whose counsel I value intensely. Recently, she told me: Do not look for love. This might not be an original piece of advice but I took it to heart only because it came from her. Advice, when you receive it from people you deeply respect, is a powerful thing; from others, it's a bore. The perks of directing a festival are manifold, but receiving instruction on staples of the mighty heart are matchless benefits.

Farrokh Chotthia showed his astonishing, chiseled photographs in India for the first time with Sensorium, and the jazz portraits—most strikingly, Erkyah Badu, Miles Davis – drew large, awestruck crowds. From FC I learned you can let your work just be—a profound, long-term simmering, no desire to show or exhibit, to make the work for the pleasure of itself, to pursue beauty as the thing in itself, no agenda, no ambition, no expected return. We had to cajole him into showing the work, and we're glad he did—students who came to hear him speak were bowled by his charm, insight, guidance, his absolute absence of guile. He's also so giving we had to restrain him from gifting his work to strangers who, somewhat brazenly, just asked. ('Sir, can you please put it back on the wall, never mind what the artist said').

Lisa Ray and Farrokh Chottia. Image: Chetan Morajkar

Salman Rushdie wrote a supreme introduction to FC's photographs, and from Salman—via brief but valued interactions—I learned only the very best minds are efficient, thoughtful, totally on point communicators. You know how some folks delay responding to an email or a sms because it might make them seem available (while playing hard to get will make you seem crucial)? Salman plays no such games. When he responds, he'll be quick, correct and princely (for Sensorium's show of Chothia's Jazz photos he wrote a robust, precise introduction while under duress of completing his new novel). Another New York resident, writer and social media divinity, Arianna Huffington, offered Sensorium events room at the Huffington Post. Over lunch in Bombay, to discuss the partnership the Huffington Post (and, equally, Conde Nast India and Moet & Chandon) extended to Sensorium she told me she always took notes by hand and that she 'completed projects that were going nowhere by abandoning them' which, incidentally, is how I deal with my lovers.